PMs change and lol we're all gonna die (but brexit will never end)

A referendum is really the only way to nullify the first one and loads of people will still be angry. Continuity remain has a lot to answer for - soft Brexit was clearly the least worst option to exit and they kept turning it down. Verhoefstadt at the Lib Dem conference looks and sounds awful and I’d expect to see clips of that heavily used during another leave campaign.

I mean look at this shit:

Jo Swinson struggling to rebut claim that new “revoke” position is undemocratic. Surely just has to say that if Lib Dems win a general election on a revoke platform, that would mean revoke would have won a democratic mandate

— Jonathan Freedland (@Freedland) September 16, 2019

Just saw this and extremely otm too

And this is why things don't get better pic.twitter.com/sySKBIna0D

— .. -.. .. --- - (@LeithMotive) September 16, 2019

how much fucking crack can people smoke? i've got more chance of forming the next government than the CUNTS DIE DIE DIE Lib Dems

I'm down with that. I also happen to believe that such a wide-scale transformation is likelier to occur within rather than without the EU.

xps

i've said it before pom but literally the only thing that led me to vote remain in the end was concern for my European friends and neighbours. the institution is all kinds of a mess and yeah the best way to reform it is from within but all i hear when i see FBPEers bleating is middle class cunts who calmly stood thru 40 years of Thatcherite economics in this country throwing their toys out of the pram because it might be a bit harder to visit their holiday homes in future

i find it really hard to argue with my gammon friends that the votes they cast in good faith mean fuck all. i can josh them about their xenophobia and that xenophobia is real and stupid like all xenophobia but the genie has been released, smug cunts just endlessly saying "fuck 'em" are not helping the ish at all. the only people whose opinions i take remotely seriously on this are non UK nationals living here because you've had the horrible misfortune to be here at a time when England - not the UK's - natural massive racism and exceptionalism has been given full rein

but unless cunts on the remain side get real and think about the consequences, i give up

The closer the Tories get to making up with the Brexit Party, the closer Labour will (I hope) come to making "support Remain in a referendum" - but there will be a lot of carefully worded ambiguity before then.

The 'plastic bag tax' story has a different moral than most people think, by the way*. The sanctions tightening that they swapped it for never happened - the LDs had advice that it was illegal, and supported it with the proviso that it wouldn't require a law change.

But the reveal of it has been the story (the tweet from Polly Mackenzie that reveals that it never happened ends "Ha ha") and the moral is that clever artfulness will do fuck all for you if it feeds into a narrative that people already believe. "Well, actually" will do as much good for Labour's wavy Brexit position as it did for the Lib Dems.

*not that the Lib Dems aren't largely trash, but that's not the moral.

xp her response to the question about how to get young people into politics was really weird - she seemed to be describing herself as a young person (she is 39), which isn’t really what the question was asking. It’s such an easy question too, you just say that you should create policies that address the needs young people have, like housing and employment, but I guess that’s a problem when you don’t have any.

When asked how to get young people involved in politics, Jo says, "I want to respond, you're asking a young politician! I'm not exactly typical!"

— Jonn Elledge (@JonnElledge) September 15, 2019

how much fucking crack can people smoke?

how much have u got

i've smoked all mine, it was a legit question

even if it turns out that there are lots of secret die-hard remainers whose scepticism might suddenly be assuaged and vote won by an announcement from corbyn, and if they are in the relevant marginals like stoke, and if they outweigh losses from pro-brexit voters that labour might alienate with such a position - the party doesn't operate with corbyn making executive decisions on this, people are split on this and the current policy is a v delicate compromise. this has been said a few times itt so any lingering scepticism on this point should be articulated or we're going nowhere

referenda do not work well with the parliamentary party system but if you want a democratic outcome then I think it's better to let ppl vote and go along with it rather than trying to impose consensus onto the party where there is none for no clear benefit, unless you want a pro-remain opposition for purity/'strategic genius' reasons

otm

I want a pro-remain opposition because the alternative is backing up a dumptruck full of votes onto the Lib Dem's lawn.

I also think that long-term keeping the labour party reasonably together is more important than the media optics for the next brexit campaign, esp given that there's no reason to think it will be any more final or decisive than the last one

pro-remain opposition after the next GE

Second referendum is Labour policy and it's a referendum between a properly negotiated Brexit deal and Remain, which is better than the blind-stab-in-the-dark choice that was presented last time. It's the only democratic way forward at this stage because - and this is crucial - at this juncture no one really respects the result of the 2016 referendum *and that includes the people who won*. The mistake everyone in government made was to treat a narrow win as a mandate for any Brexit at all, and it's been hijacked by No Deal ultras as a result.

The problem is that any Labour referendum will be cast as illegitimate by the ultras, it'll be Surrender vs Remain, but what other option is there at this stage?

total nuclear war is looking increasingly attractive tbh

BBC 6music news reporting extensively on a speech by a Liberal Democrat MP called Chuka Umunna, in which he criticizes the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Long clip of CU saying poisonous trash about JC at great length.

This isn't even Radio 4.

i'm afraid if you listen to 6 you deserve everything you get

i mean this is true of the entire BBC at this stage but still

As I was trying to say above, if it's a four-way fight then I'm more relaxed about it - but if it's one Brexit / Tory party candidate per constituency and Labour still half-arsing this and hoping someone asks them a question about housing, then we're going to see what happens when Boris Johnson has a sizable majority, and no-one on this thread is going to like that.

i don't think most of us will blame Labour for the cunts who are stupid enough to vote Lib Dem because they only give a shit about Remain

BBC 6music news reporting extensively on a speech by a Liberal Democrat MP called Chuka Umunna, in which he criticizes the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Long clip of CU saying poisonous trash about JC at great length.

This isn't even Radio 4.

xp otm, Lib Dems don’t give a shit about any of us - they’d have taken the pragmatic approach of aiming for a softer Brexit & working backwards rather than denying anything that’s not full Remain and inviting Guy fucking Verhoefstadt (I am so mad about this ffs) to their conference to make a speech that makes the EU sound like a fucking super villain project!!!

FBPEers bleating is middle class cunts who calmly stood thru 40 years of Thatcherite economics

I hear you, I just don't think 'pwning the FBPErs' is a solid programme for the left, unless resentment – no matter how justified – is your sole MO. Coming at this from a (very) foreign perspective, it's hard to see the UK's current woes as anything but self-devised. It's not as though there were some EU-wide law preventing Sweden, Denmark or the Netherlands from implementing strong social policies (well, unless your actual goal is full communism, in which case ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). You could argue that the EU ought to be more interventionist (see: Hungary, Poland, Italy, etc.), but that comes with its own obvious set of pitfalls, and it's not hard to guess how most of the British public views such a prospect. This is wishful thinking, of course, but my preference for the UK would be: stop endlessly electing and re-electing the Parties of Austerity, crack down on tax evasion, redistribute the shit out of your ill-gotten post-imperial wealth, leave immigrants the fuck alone, etc., all of which strike me as easier to achieve from within the EU (which is, after all, the sum of its parts).

“You cannot be a champion of liberalism when your leader’s supporters think it is acceptable to abuse, vilify and deselect anyone who dares to question the leader.

xp

yeah well i think the sum of my post was a guarded "better in than out"

the class ressentiment at the FBPEeps on here is purely for bitter lulz, not a programme

Didn’t one of the led by donkeys fools say pre Brexit that the only campaigning he’d done previously was to save 6music? Impossible to parody.
― gyac, Monday, September 16, 2019 11:44 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

looooooooooool is this true pls be true

I hear you Pom but in no way does the British public seem capable of procession what the EU could even mean for the country (this goes for 'the public' in nearly all EU-member states tbf). It's more important to stop those thieves in Brussels taking 350m every week, and straight bananas iirc.

Furthermore: Pom for PM. It has a certain je ne sais quoi to it, too.

trudeau running scared

trudat

eagerly await pm pom's tour of the north

This is wishful thinking, of course, but my preference for the UK would be: stop endlessly electing and re-electing the Parties of Austerity, crack down on tax evasion, redistribute the shit out of your ill-gotten post-imperial wealth, leave immigrants the fuck alone, etc., all of which strike me as easier to achieve from within the EU (which is, after all, the sum of its parts).

"This is wishful thinking, of course, but my preference for the UK would be: stop endlessly electing and re-electing the Parties of Austerity, crack down on tax evasion, redistribute the shit out of your ill-gotten post-imperial wealth, leave immigrants the fuck alone, etc., all of which strike me as easier to achieve from within the EU (which is, after all, the sum of its parts)."

Maybe, maybe not. They haven't left non-EU migrants alone, for example. I don't see any initiatives coming from the EU to tackle hostility towards people's rights in Poland or Hungary. Nor do I see any programs regarding tax evasion.

A lot of the FPBEs are soft lefts who have definitely complained about austerity, but from the perspective of it being something terrible happening to people less fortunate than them. Brexit is probably the first bad thing that Tories have initiated that has affected them personally, so what do they go and do? Attack Jemery Cobbon, of course, because it’s his fault for trying to back away slowly from the entire shitshow.

This is just an aside but it you were to poll FPBErs I'd guess that a disproportionate number of them would be working in a public sector that's been decimated by neolib and austerity policies and have themselves railed against those policies.

some of my best friends are fbpe

look if you stop lobbing them up we'll stop smashing them back over the net

"It's not as though there were some EU-wide law preventing Sweden, Denmark or the Netherlands from implementing strong social policies (well, unless your actual goal is full communism, in which case ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)."

But what if the Labour Party's program became more than mild social democracy? There are different brands of left that aren't full communism.

All the countries you mention are from the European north. We have a new government in Italy who will try to pass a budget that could push EU rules. A situation to be watched closely because if this coalition doesn't work we will have elections with Salvini on the march.

I don't see any initiatives coming from the EU to tackle hostility towards people's rights in Poland or Hungary.

Then you've missed it, because they are trying to:

EU parliament votes to punish Hungary over 'breaches' of core values
EU weighs costs of punishing Poland

(it's not enough and cost-weighing is ugly, but you can't say there are "no initiatives")

what would 'more than mild social democracy' feasibly be

not against it, just wondering

I may possibly be attuned to certain of my peers/age cohort in the media who have never had to worry personally about destitution etc etc, of s piece with my distaste for those who insensitively proclaim they are ‘politically homeless’.

That article on Hungary is from 2018. What has happened since then?

That article on Hungary is from 2018. What has happened since then?

― xyzzzz__, Monday, September 16, 2019 2:08 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

They're still thinking abt it iirc ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

what would 'more than mild social democracy' feasibly be

100% inheritance tax, workers on every company board, gulags, not even joking

socialism should never be an end goal, we demand economic democracy and we keep fucking demanding forwards forever

Just in the last couple of weeks: seizure of shares and property.

They're still thinking abt it iirc ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

― Le Bateau Ivre, Monday, 16 September 2019 bookmarkflaglink

Lol@ the European empire

There are unknowns, in terms of what Labour could come up with, because it's up to the membership - whose numbers and composition have been changing and will continue to do so. The ability to see what is happening, propose solutions. Coming from the bottom.

This cannot be interfered with by the leadership of the Labour party, the unelected British establishment, or some shithead in Brussels with joke notions of an European empire throwing his EU book around.

testify comrade <3

we will fight and we will win because time and numbers are on our side

until the sea swallows us up but hey